Key Issues enhance human rights knowledge among their teachers and students. Accordingly, the Government should ensure the financial budget allotted to schools in Malaysia is adequate in order for them to procure such materials. Apart from insufficient materials, another problem that the Commission has observed is that some school administrators have yet to fully understand the long-term objective of this Programme, which is to eventually embed human rights principles in all existing subjects and have a formal human rights subject in the current school syllabus. The Commission hopes that its continued cooperation with the Ministry of Education and the various schools will bolster efforts towards having human rights education as a formal subject taught and practised in schools. 3. REFUGEES AND ASYLUM SEEKERS During the year, the Commission observed several positive steps taken by the Government of Malaysia to address the refugee and asylum seeker population in the country. This year, the Government announced its proposal to Parliament to allow Rohingya refugees to seek employment through a pilot project, which will focus on certain market sectors. Further, in May 2015, the Government announced that Malaysia, together with Indonesia, would allow the entry of 7,000 boat people adrift at sea, among whom were asylum seekers. In addition, in December 2015 the Government had also announced that Malaysia had begun accepting 3,000 Syrian refugees. However, the issues affecting refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia are far from resolved. Earlier in the year, Malaysia was put under the international spotlight with the gruesome discovery of the ‘death camps’ in Wang Kelian, Perlis, which demonstrated the vulnerability of refugees that led to the loss of many lives. More worrisome was the alleged involvement of some enforcement officers with the traffickers. Despite the above, coupled with the fact that a total of 153,850 refugees and asylum seekers had registered with the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Malaysia by September 2015, Malaysia has not shown any apparent advancement towards acceding to the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees. Since Malaysia has not yet acceded to the Convention, the assistance afforded thus far has been primarily on humanitarian grounds. As such, beyond those persons allowed by the Government, other refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia remain in legal limbo, which in turn, has increased their vulnerability and risk of being exploited. Many of them are unable to find jobs, access healthcare services, or send their children to school. On the other hand, while not being a State Party to the 1951 UN Refugee Convention, Malaysia does have responsibilities towards certain members of the refugee population in Malaysia, arising from the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the Convention on 19 BOOK-ANR2016-01-latest.indb 19 08/04/2016 3:32 PM